The Bay Area media is flowing with takes attempting to put out the fires caused by the report LeBron would be interested in Golden State.

What reason could there be for such a staunch defense against adding the league’s best player to the league’s best team? “Tarnishing” his legacy? They already burned the guy’s jersey once and most people forgot once he started winning titles.

Could the drama that comes with LeBron’s teams “ruin” the best team of all time? No star player is without baggage. Next.

Team propaganda to make potentially vulnerable players forget about it and go back to being good employees? Not unlikely!

I don’t know the motivations or sources behind such opinions but I do know this: coming up with reasons for LeBron James not to join your basketball team is the ultimate form of playing yourself.

First of all, the Cavs have already shown a willingness to do a sign and trade with LeBron before. The Cavs did that when he went to Miami and Dan Gilbert has done more prep this time around for life without LeBron. He’s reluctant to give up the Brooklyn pick and netting some kind of value back for James to trade later down the line, or build around, would help their rebuild. For all his faults, Gilbert seems to have learned his lesson that it’s important to prepare for the worst.

The most appetizing version for the Warriors, as Leroux laid out, is getting LeBron to opt-in to his player option before agreeing to get traded to Golden State like Chris Paul did with the Rockets last season. This would be the easiest way for the Warriors to get LeBron but also keep their elite shooting team together by holding on to Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. Or they could decide to keep Draymond Green instead of Thompson.

There’s also another possibility to consider that is a little more roundabout and unlikely, but not all that crazy in the big picture.

Let’s say they want to create cap space to sign James as a free agent, the only way they can do that and keep Durant, Curry and Thompson/or Green, is to convince Durant to opt out of his deal and take a pay cut before acquiring his bird rights after next season.

Durant has a player option for next season worth $25 million. He’s already shown a willingness to take pay cuts, as he did last summer, forfeiting $6 million to help the Warriors sign Andre Iguodala as a free agent. A team does not have a player’s bird rights until they’ve been with them for three seasons. After next season, Durant will have done that with the Warriors. But he would need to take a paycut in the ballpark of $14 million before being able to sign a big deal with LeBron James on his team.

If the Warriors figure out a way to create cap space by holding on to either Thompson and Curry or Green and Curry, they would have enough space to sign LeBron and then re-sign Durant to a team-friendly deal before they acquire his bird rights and give him a big money deal next season.

Once they acquire his bird rights, they can go over the cap to sign him to a much bigger deal that is more representative of Durant’s worth. It would require going into the luxury tax but could you really say no to the three best players in the league all on the same team alongside another all-star in the richest market in the league?

And don’t forget, Durant is on Team LeBron at the All-Star game. So, he can get a feel for what it’s like to be on his team to see if it’s worth giving up a ton of money. This is more unlikely than the opt-in, but it’s possible and it wouldn’t gut the Warriors core.

To say the Warriors wouldn’t or couldn’t do it is just nonsense. It smells of the organization getting in front of a possible story that could disrupt their chemistry and locker room. But the best team in the league doesn’t want to add the best player in the world? Come on, don’t play yourself.

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